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Cassie
Serving as The Ironclad's primary wreck diver, orbital specialist and living technological encyclopedia, Cassie is one of the most active characters in Wild Space. As the sole vat-born character among the crew so far, a number of stories have been written making use of various unique or rather unfortunate genetic modifications woven into her body at birth. Appearance Barely standing at five foot tall, Cassie 's lithe build is typical of many orbital workers, or those who operate for long hours in total vacuum. Extremely short furred and grey save for a shock of pink hair, her feline build is near constantly encased within a radiation shielded biosuit, and it's not uncommon to see her completely sealed off from the world. Personality Excitable, highly strung and more than a little naive, Cassie 's personality has been shaped as much by her in-built knowledge as her extremely short time among the stars. (TBC) History A late series VIII prototype, Cassie was test-tube born with the intention to fund a multi-purpose worker loyal to Scorpio Industries. Having suffered multiple setbacks during the minifacturing financial crisis, the company's main assets had either lost considerable worth or had been rendered financially non-viable. having lost a third of its market worth over the course of two years it needed to hit back hard, and plans were instead made to dominate the starship construction sector. To cut costs and replace workers, it put much of its funding into designing the most cost effective worker possible, someone born with the innate knowledge needed to immediately work upon vessels, operate without food or sleep for prolonged periods of time and even serve as a power source for their own tools. As the fourth attempt, Cassie showed promise but a number of lingering genetic and imprinting issues prevented her release onto the massed market, causing delays for months on end. During this time, Pluto's government bought out the failing Scorpio Industries through a series of proxy companies, which shut down the research in its own cost cutting methods. As technically an asset rather than an employee, this led to Cassie being inherited and transported to Pluto along with major facilities and elements from their shipyards. (TBC) Genetic Modifications Cassie's major genetic alterations stem from a mixture of existing and experimental processes, upgraded and modified to work on a more efficient level. Most prominent among these are the zero gravity modifications, intended to limit the degenerating effects of continual spacewalks and enhanced athleticism modifications, both commonplace in many fields. Each however underwent a series of experimental alterations, intended to tie into Cassie's more unique enhancements. For example, the vacuum-proofing of her form has been substantially upgraded, built to endure longer periods while exposed to the void. Along with sealing off major capillaries, throat, nostrils, ear-ducts and other vulnerable points, her eyes secrete an oily substance which quickly covers them in a layer of film, preventing any serious damage. Her flesh also hardens, solidifying to allow her to endure far lengthier exposure and while limiting movement, enhances the energy absorbing nature of her body. This same energy is used to produce a stockpile of oxygen via her secondary organs, expanding her lung size and inflating her "resoviour" organs, gradually putting her into suspended animation until she can be recovered. Absorbing background energy also allows Cassie to operate sans sleep or food for lengthy periods of time, at least in theory. Testing has shown that this is a flawed method to rely upon as a complete replacement either. Attempting to run purely upon absorbing energy for days or weeks at a time results in "cravings" leaving her hungering for any and all food or sleeping for hours on end. However, it has instead proven to be quite effective in fueling her enhanced healing factor. While sadly inferior to military grade variants, even absorbing small amounts of background radiation has assisted substantially in countering basic muscle degeneration or atrophying of her skeletal structure. Secondary and altered organs have assisted in granting her body natural athleticism, and an edge over other workers. Several alterations to her brain structure has offered her vastly improved spacial awareness, and a natural ability to predict the speed and path of countless objects within her vision. It is hoped that this could be used to assist in avoiding debris during dock-working accidents or recovery operations, targeting and prioritizing the most vital components via sheer instinct. This has also proved to have had the unexpectedly beneficial mutation of complete conscious control over her own body, predicting her own required strength, momentum, and movement in milliseconds. Unfortunately, her sheer lack of skill (or basic knowledge) in hand to hand combat has rendered most of these attributes useless in direct fighting, and its effects are limited to dodging strikes rather than blocking them or launching counter-attacks. It is expected that this will offer her heightened suitability upon encountering hostile Sirens or unidentified threats. Cassie's own instinctive, imprinted knowledge has offered her an edge when it comes to salvage operations, judging an item's worth or a vast knowledge of various military and civilian vessels. Statistics, blueprints and general layouts have been etched into her very mind, right down to minor design flaws or crew-reported issues in multiple locations. While it cannot be simply called up at will about a single item, a question from a superior or seeing a specific object will allow her to instantly answer any question down to the most minute detail. Some have found that, as another mutation, this has offered her mind several oddly computer-like qualities which have again been limited to answering questions rather than calling upon the answers purely at will. Combined elements of the two have offered her some degree of skill as a general pilot across a multitude of vessels, from ground cars to freighters. Though, for some strange reason, her energetic and inexperienced nature means few are willing to put multi-million credit equipment in her paws. Unfortunately, much of Cassie's innate knowledge is imprinted from official information or widespread elements of that certain item rather than the specific one she might be examining at the time. She has been shown to be flummoxed or stumped by personal upgrades and alterations, and more recent designs of "uglies" have left her unable to offer help beyond their component parts. Naturally, having a highly energetic, freedom loving worker with an innate knowledge of military grade equipment resulted in several fail-safes being initiated in her gene-sequencing. These range from passive limitations to extremely notable hindering ones, which were encouraged to prevent escape. Several suspected have been mentioned thus far, chief among these being her lack of in-built skill or knowledge at hand to hand combat or piloting custom-job vehicles. This was intended to severely limit her ability to flee from her owners, which combined with her social retardation would quickly limit her options and make her easier to track. Atop of this, certain biological traits were built with the intention of limiting her ability to hide among crowds or on terrestrial environments. Her dislike for natural foods was foremost among these, but atop of this her skeletal structure does not handle natural gravity well. While extremely well suited to artificial grav-plating and weightlessness environments, the slight variations in how gravity operated on planets would physically drain her over time. The more Earth-like the environment the faster it would exhaust her. Even prior to escape however, her personal traits were shaped to make her extremely loyal to those she saw has her superiors, staying with them and trusting them implicitly. While the extent of this might vary depending upon her nature, or relationship, once she saw someone as an ally Cassie would find it difficult to believe otherwise. Perhaps the strangest among these traits is Cassie's hair. Originally, a biological signal would be emitted upon escaping from the company, triggering a dramatic shift in her follicles and turn her hair to bright, vibrant colours. With Scorpio Industries gone, this was apparently triggered upon its demise and is now effectively her natural tone. During final testing, several critical flaws were found within Cassie's biology and mental state which made her non-viable for massed replication. Several were being researched when the company was bought out, and to this day it remains unknown if these were truly solved or not. The foremost examples was the difficulty imprinting several concepts upon her mind. Like so many test-tube born creatures, she was to be born with a basic history of false memories ingrained into her mind, to structure her persona. Many of these showed her childhood upbringing, basic training and several key events to make her extremely disciplined, focused and subservient. Her creators were quite surprised when, upon awakening, she emerged with none of these traits and a far more juvenile personality than intended. Some pressing has shown that Cassie apparently forcibly resisted them, or resisted their traits somehow claiming that they were "uninteresting, and really boring". It is, as of yet, unknown if she was being honest or not about this detail. Cass' loyalty was one element which did successfully graft onto her personalty, but ultimately not in the way they wished. Rather than making her loyal to the corporation as a whole, it instead ensured she was most loyal to those she immediately worked with; in this particular case, one of the workers supervising her by the name of Sofia. Furthermore, rather than being militant and controlled, she instead treated them more like family or close friends, causing more than a few problems in early stages. Easily the most prominent failing was the intention to have Cass' body absorb vast quantities of energy. After taking elements of the Generation 2 Gene Mod being experimented upon by the military to allow her body to expand, and traditional engineering grade rad-shielding genes, part of her form was rebuilt to store gigawatts of energy at a time. This exact means in which this is achieve is unknown, but skin contact is enough to drain any exposed source of energy in moments. This allows her to use anything from strong sources of background radiation to low level energy weapons to contain energy, her body expanding and shifting to retain it until it can be expended in some way. While almost discarded thanks to its cartoonish traits, the company was won over on promises of how much they could save if workers could power their own tools and equipment via their own bodies. Unfortunately, with no off-switch of any kind, Cassie would repeatedly bloat up and expand until she was at full capacity, often rendering her immobile. To make matters worse, even small quantities like those from a taser would prepare her form for massed energy consumption, expanding her body in moments and often taking hours at a time to wear off. Without protective shielding covering most of her body, this continually rendered her useless in any operation, leaving her as little more than a sentient battery floating among workers. After a series of expansive incidents, some suspected to have originated from co-workers given Sofia's responses, this led to Cass' series being shelved and eventually shut down with no solutions ever found.